That's one thing I never quite understood about some fans' vehement hatred of a character who was meant to be basically exactly as he came across.
Keep in mind, folks, that JMS had high hopes back then of being offered an opportunity to do a theatrical movie based on the Telepath Wars. Can't you see that the kind of attitude-duality we see in Byron makes a lot of sense?
He's been corrupted, and was carefully molded to be basically a dangerous bully, like all the Psi cops. He madly throws himself into an attempt to reverse things, and to win the fight by bringing out the better part of his nature.
I also find it rather humorous that a culture that professes to worship Jesus Christ as a savior really, really tend to hate people who actually live as Jesus supposedly lived.
In any event, so now you have a man who was, quite truthfully, exceptionally good at what he was being trained to do. He quite bravely made a huge effort to escape that fate, and then to correct some of the horrible damage done by Psi Corps.
But he's still, fundamentally, an angry, powerful, dangerous man. He can keep his anger under control, but his followers can't. Hmmm, sound familiar?
But everyone seems to be so understanding of Lyta's anger. Of course, we get to see more of her story from a personal level, so it's more natural to sympathize with her. But I've heard many people discussing the truth behind the assertion made in the series that Lyta (and other telepaths who have helped them like Talia) tend to get screwed over by us "normals".
I think the sad truth is that most of us just can't relate to someone making such a major change that he'd risk his own life to try to find a better option for his people. Of
course he was out to help his people, and his people only. What do you expect? His people are the ones getting screwed whether they cooperate with the Psi Corps or they cooperate with their enemies. They are never going to find ANY group that will actually give a hoot about their lives and their fates.
Considering how fans (male fans in particular) responded to Marcus, I'd say it's a good thing he had some cool lines and some great fighting scenes. I wonder how much of that is the reason he's so relatively popular while Byron is so often ranted against.
But of course, there is also the fact that most of us probably wouldn't or couldn't do what he did. Let's face it, folks, your choices were pretty much to cooperate, and slaughter "mundanes" at the slightest whim, or to be hunted down and eventually probably killed by Psi Corps. I think sometimes we have trouble admitting that Byron's forced attempt to find
some kind of other solution is a task too great for most of us to even attempt.
If JMS had written Byron to be the fighting-messiah type (Barabas instead of Jesus), perhaps he'd be more generally well liked. He'd have had some cool fight scenes at least, eh?
Since people love to rant on and on about how horrible Byron is, I have to pop in every now and then and offer another perspective on the situation. You may continue the Byron-bashing any time his name comes up again, now.
